


before the new dawn

by SpaceUnicornDot



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: "fix it?" sorta?, F/M, Resist Ending (Far Cry), because reasons, ending spoilers, i wanted to give them a happier ending, so this is what happened instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 11:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceUnicornDot/pseuds/SpaceUnicornDot
Summary: The Heralds are defeated. Eden's Gate finally seems ready to fall. All that remains between peace, at last, and Alastar is Joseph Seed. There's no walking away now.





	before the new dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I finally finished the game myself for the first time, and I have a lot of feelings about absolutely everything. And I decided that I just couldn't leave it like that without at least trying a different ending for my poor Deputy. This was supposed to be something I wrote later, after writing some other stuff to introduce him earlier in the game's story, but... oops? I had emotions?

Alastar felt unsteady on his feet - from the Bliss, from the exhaustion, from the _torture_ … _All of it_ , to get to this very moment.

“Forgive them, Father… They know not what they do…”

How long had it been since that goddamn _fucking_ warrant that had gotten them all into this fucking shit? Weeks, at the absolute least. _Months?_

Joseph Seed crawled before him slowly, and the deputy followed just as shakily until Joseph rose to his knees, eyes turning towards the sky once more. “When the lamb opened the seventh seal… there was silence in Heaven…”

Alastar’s hand slipped from his holster. The roaring winds that had kicked up around them calmed to clear skies. Whitehorse, Pratt, and Hudson approached from behind, but everyone’s eyes were around them.

He didn’t fucking know what was real anymore… What to _trust_ … John had marked him, he’d seen shit from that Bliss that wasn’t there, things that weren’t what they had originally appeared, and Jacob… Under that _fucking_ song…

“And the seven angels before God were given seven trumpets… and there were noises, thunderings, lightnings… and an earthquake…”

Birds took to the skies in the nearby trees with a startled trill. The wind now whispered through the trees instead of whipping around the compound. That quiet, that _peace..?_

That was the Hope County Alastar had come to love when he’d moved six years ago.

He fumbled his pistol out of the holster at his thigh. This man… This _fucking monster_ … was behind all of it..! The kidnappings, the torture, the _lies_ … had been his way of _protecting_ people..? Manipulation of his _own family_ …

Everyone had a story, after all.

And they’d taken it all away from them. One man’s twisted, fucked up sense of _destiny_ … And the use and abuse of others...

“Alastar..?” Joey’s voice sounded distant, abstract.

Joseph looked back at him - that _fucked up_ smile, like this was his plan all along… And maybe it fucking was. It _was_. Everything had been to _bait him_ and he’d fucking _taken it_ , practically without question.

Joseph Seed was a monster, but… he was _right_ … _Right_ about a couple things.

“And I heard a great voice from the temple say to the angels -- go your ways, and pour from the vials the wrath of God upon the Earth!”

“Deputy!”

Alastar squeezed the trigger.

 _Yes_. This world was _fucked_. Hell, maybe there was some goddamn collapse coming. Perhaps, something should have been done. Maybe the world _did_ need to start over. But it was wrong to remove people’s choice, even if that was to remain “ignorant,” to pretend like they weren’t living in a world ready to explode at the drop of a hat.

“Alastar! _Alastar!_ ” He staggered at the force, Joey almost colliding with him, one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping his arm. His grip tightened around the pistol when she first tried to take it before, a moment later, he relinquished, and she passed the gun to Whitehorse behind her.

Her hands framed his face, reeling him back to her before they all turned to Joseph Seed, slumped backwards, blood pooling from the single hole now between his eyes.

“I-I… I’m sorry, Sherriff,” Alastar stumbled hoarsely with the words. He couldn’t risk it; not after how many times he’d almost lost them, everything he’d fucking _been through_.

A blinding flash sent them all staggering before he could say anything more. It was only Joey’s hold around his shoulders that kept him from collapsing completely.

When they managed to straighten, a cloud of smoke was rising in the distance.

“Oh my God..,” Joey breathed beside him, echoed shortly by Staci with growing intensity.

And then came the blast of rushing wind.

“We gotta GO!” Whitehorse yelled, starting to break the group out of their apparent trance. “The truck! Move, MOVE!”

Joey managed to react quicker, dragging him by the arm towards the truck. “C’mon! Get in!” Pratt and Whitehorse piled into the back as Joey shoved Alastar at the driver’s seat.

“Drive!” Whitehorse called.

Alastar’s hands shook as he fumbled with the keys, struggling to slide them into the ignition. Joseph Seed was dead, and they were running from… from… “He was right…”

“Pratt, shut the fuck up!” Joey hissed.

He shifted the truck into drive and slammed on the gas as soon as the vehicle coughed to life, locking the wheel in a deathly grip.

 _“Jesus fucking Christ, kid…”_ Dutch’s voice crackled to life through the radio at his belt.

The bunker. Dutch’s bunker. They needed to _go_.

_“Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, get to the goddamn bunker! Now!”_

“I told you, he was _fucking right!_ ”

 _Your friends have been taken and tortured. And it’s_ your fault. _Countless people have been killed and it is_ your fault. _The world is on fire and it’s_ your fault.

Maybe he was… Maybe he fucking _was!_

“Go, GO!” Somehow, he’d managed to autopilot back through the burning inferno to Dutch’s bunker - could see the light from the open door through the crackling flames and crashing branches, could just make out Dutch’s figure waiting there for them.

The crack of a tree sounded nearby and Joey grabbed him, one arm around him, and hurried him down the stairs. Dutch briefly pat his shoulder on their way by, rushing Pratt and Whitehorse in behind them before sealing the bunker door once more.

They’d _made it_. By fucking god, they’d _made it_.

“Is everyone alright?” Alastar was huddled into Joey’s hold in the end of the hall, shaking faintly, while Earl and Staci had strayed off to the side, shaken and uncertain.

Fuck, no, they weren’t alright. But it at least seemed they’d made it with no physical harm.

The group looked around at one another and, slowly, gathered a silent agreement from nods. “At the very least, we’re all alive, thanks to you and our deputy here,” Earl said finally.

“Joseph?”

“Dead,” Alastar finally spoke up, though it was only the silence in the group that let him be heard. “I… I… shot him…” Slowly, he looked towards Whitehorse uncertainly. “Earl, after everything, I-” There was no way… Simply arresting him had already gone so fucking sideways once...

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Whitehorse shook his head with a tired sigh. “I…”

“For the better,” Dutch muttered in agreement. “For now, though, let’s get you all settled in. We’re not going anywhere for a while, and you all look like hell.”

The deputies eventually settled in the living room while Dutch and Whitehorse convened in the back room. Joey and Alastar took the couch, Joey with her arms around him, tracing patterns slowly across his shoulder, while Staci claimed a stray chair.

“What the hell are we gonna do now?”

Joey closed her eyes tightly to the question. Alastar hadn’t said much since killing Joseph, and, quite frankly, who could blame any of them?

Who the fuck had a plan for this shit? Even if you did, even if you had a bunker and supplies.., how did you actually process it?

“Goddamn ‘Collapse,’” she muttered. Even after a stretch of silence, it was all she could come up with. “To survive all of that, just for this?”

Alastar scoffed, surprising her, and she looked down to see a faint smile on his lips, despite his evident fatigue. “Y’know, if you woulda told me I’d be moving out of New York for this shit, I woulda called _you_ crazy.”

They laughed for a moment, grimacing from wounds and bruises that hadn’t quite healed, and for no certain reason why… What else was there to do?

“Guess we have to start over,” he murmured finally. “This is what we fought for.”

“Some world for it,” Pratt muttered.

“We’ve gotta try. We give up now, then… it really was for nothing.”

They fell silent again for a stretch, Staci fidgeting with his hands.

“I never did… quite get the chance to thank you.”

Alastar’s brow furrowed, shifting slightly in Joey’s hold. In the quiet, after all the fighting, after Jacob’s trials, he’d nearly fallen asleep on her chest. “What for?”

“Coming back.” Staci drew in a deep breath and sat back before releasing it. “I told you not to fuckin’ come back.”

 _Eli_. His chest tightened with the pain of the memory. It was one of the last things he wanted to think about then. If Eli hadn’t rescued him.., if he hadn’t gone back for Pratt…

 _There it is. Greed._   _Always thinking of yourself._

_You’d rather watch the world suffer and burn than swallow your Pride!_

Alastar shook his head faintly. “Just… glad… we made it,” he said quietly.

Staci nodded with a faint smile. Joey shared it as he passed a look to her, Alastar’s eyes drifting closed again in her arms.

“I couldn’t let that fucking bastard…”

“Shhh,” Joey urged. “Right now, what we all need is rest. You’ve more than earned it, Deputy.”

Alastar released a faint breath of a laugh and Staci rose to his feet, heading off to check in with Earl and Dutch.

The future was uncertain, but, at the very least, they’d have each other to get through it. If they had that, then they could figure this out… whatever came next.


End file.
